February 6, 2019 • 27 mins
Addressing problematic gossip from coworkers, negotiating salary when you get a written offer, a boss who freaks out when you're a few minutes late, and more.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
My colleagues, We'll stop commenting on everything I get. My
assistant rolls eyes at people and meeting. Why does my
coworker keep taking credit for all my ideas? Have any
wisdom for me? Hi, I'm Alison Green. Welcome to the
Asking Manager podcast. Right answer questions from listeners about life
at work, everything from what to say if you're allergic
to your coworkers perfume to what to do if you
drink too much at the company party. Let's get started, Hi,
(00:28):
and welcome to the show. Today. I'm going to answer
a bunch of shorter questions from people, and the first
question we have is from someone who has a warm,
friendly relationship with her manager, but other people don't like it,
and she's not entirely sure about it herself. Hi, I
have a question. I work in an office. There are
(00:48):
about five other individuals in my division that report the
same manager. This manager is several years younger than me.
I'm in my mid thirties and he is about twenty
years younger than my colleague. My colleagues have and continue
to question his authority due to his age and relative
and experience in the industry. My manager and I get
(01:08):
along fairly well, and although we aren't friends, were friendly.
I assume that a lot of us have to do
with our age and that we're going through similar life experiences.
We're both newly married and have young children. I realized
that he's my manager and I keep him at a
friendly distance, but I fear that more and more frequently
he's coming to me as a friend chat almost on
(01:29):
a daily basis. So I have two questions. How do
I keep my relationship with my manager friendly but make
it clear that I don't want it to cross over
into legitimate friend territory. It's not my intention to be
its friends, but I feel like keeping an open, warm
relationship with my manager and colleagues is essential to my
happiness at work due to the collaborative nature of my job. Secondly,
(01:51):
how do I manage my relationship with my colleague? I
worry that if they see me and my manager being friendly,
because they will start talking about me behind my back.
Is well, what troubles me is that they've already started
teasing me that our manager is quote in love with
me simply because we are friendly ish and are of
opposite genders. I don't want that to get out of
(02:11):
hand or may get up the change to HR just
someone who doesn't see it as a joke. How do
I nip this on both fronts? Or should I just
continue to maintain my friendly distance as my manager and
ignore my colleagues comments. Thanks for any insight, I appreciate it.
There's a lot going on here, and your colleagues, who
I think, if I'm doing the math correctly, are in
(02:33):
their fifties, are being really childish. Okay, first, let's talk
about how to keep the relationship with your manager friendly
but not friends. And having an open, warm relationship with
your boss is a great thing, and you're also right
that at the same time, you need to be thoughtful
about making sure that it doesn't start feeling more like
actual friends, because I can cause all sorts of problems
(02:56):
like not getting objective feedback when you need to hear it,
or appearance of favoritism to others, and people questioning if
you're getting special treatment whether or not you really are,
and plus the power dynamics make it weird. Like with
a true friend, if you wanted to say no to
plans or talk to them about something that they did
that upset you, you could do that, But when it's
(03:17):
your manager. The power dynamics can really complicate those things. Anyway,
it sounds like you already know all of this and
you know that you don't want it to become a friendship.
But I'm listening that all out for people listening who
might be thinking, what's the big deal? Okay, so how
do you keep the boundary? I think it's fine to
talk about shared experiences like both having young children, but
(03:39):
you want to watch out for getting too personal. Like
it's fine to talk about how you're handling sleep training
or how weird those parent and child dance classes are,
but you probably want to stay away from more emotionally
intimate stuff like how having kids has affected your relationship
with your spouse, or the way that it's making you
read visit some hard stuff from your own childhood or
(04:02):
so forth. It's the emotionally intimate stuff that you want
to avoid, and I know in some ways that can suck,
because being vulnerable can be such a powerful way to connect,
But in this case, you're trying to avoid that specific
type of connection. The other thing I would look at
is how much the two of you are talking. If
you're routinely having our long conversations about non work stuff
(04:27):
that's too much. You absolutely can have real conversations about
life with your boss, but just put limits on it,
like ten or fifteen minutes here and there is completely fine,
But when it's frequently going longer than that, then you're
more in a problem zone. Now you mentioned that more
and more often he is coming to you to chat
as a friend almost daily, and this is tricky because
(04:49):
power dynamics can make it weird to push back on that,
and because he's your boss, you probably worry that seeming
chili or standoffish could affect your work relationship too, And
this is one of the reasons that being friends with
the boss is bad, by the way, because you shouldn't
have to worry that the way that you manage a
friendship will affect you professionally. Anyway, I think you can
(05:13):
take a light touch in setting boundaries, but still set
them so like when he comes into chat, it's okay
to be on a deadline or about to need to
make a phone call. You can say, hey, can I
catch you later, I'm about to jump on a call,
or after talking for a little bit, you know, well
I better get back to this. I've got to finish
it up. Before I leave today or so forth. As
(05:36):
long as your tone is warm and friendly during the
conversation part, you should be able to do the I've
got to get back to this part without seeming chilly. Now,
let's talk about the other part of your question, managing
your relationship with your coworkers. They've started teasing you that
your boss is in love with you, which is so
(05:58):
incredibly inappropriate. This is a workplace, it's not grade school,
and they're playing with people's professional reputations here. It's really
not cool. I'm also not loving how they're questioning his
authority because of his age and his relative inexperience in
your field. You said you're in your mid thirties and
he's a few years younger, so he's like, what thirty ish.
(06:19):
It's not like your company hired someone twenty two and
straight out of college with no work experience to manage
your team. So your co workers are they sound like
they're being kind of awful. Now, if he really doesn't
have the expertise to manage the team, that is a
legitimate issue, but you didn't mention that that's what's going on.
So I have the impression that your co workers are
(06:42):
maybe not the greatest anyway. I do think you have
to put a stop to the comments about him being
in love with you, because, in addition to being bizarrely
juvenile and just inappropriate for work, that really does have
the potential to affect his reputation and potentially even cause
hr problem for him. So the next time that you
(07:03):
hear something like that, shut it down and do it
in a pretty stern tone so that it's clear that
you're not joking, because I'm worried that otherwise that will
become part of the banter that they think they have
going on, is they say it and you protest. So
make it clear from your tone that you're serious. Say
something like that's really not funny and that could cause
(07:23):
a lot of problems if someone here's that and didn't
know that you were joking. Don't say that again. And
if you get pushback on that, say I'm serious. You're
being really reckless with people's professional reputations. Stop so stern serious,
not joking around, and your colleagues are acting like children. Okay,
(07:45):
I hope that helps. Here is our next collar. Hi
Allison and loving the podcast. I'm actually a new listener
and side I'm listening to the back catalog and I
just listened to the episode on salary negotiation, which I
sounds super helpful. My question is most job offers I've
had in the last five years or so have come
to me via email, um, in an attachment, something like that,
(08:08):
and I'm wondering how to broach the conversation when you're
not already talking to the manager if that makes sense.
You know, in the examples that you gave on the podcast,
you talked about when they make the offer, counter immediately
with the are you flexible with the salary, etcetera. But
when you're receiving this in an email and you're trying
to get back to them, how do you start that conversation,
(08:33):
especially if you don't you're not sitting at the desk
or on the phone with them in that moment. I
really appreciate your insight, Thank you so much, But ah,
you want to get on the phone for this if
at all possible. So if the job offer comes in
an email, you reply to the email and you say,
I'm really excited to get this offer. Could we set
(08:54):
up a time to talk by phone in the next
day or two. I have a few questions that I
wanted to talk through. That's it. And then when you
get on the phone with them, you start by reiterating
that you're really excited for the offer. You see something
like I was really glad to get the offer. I'm
excited about this role and the work that you do.
Thanks for making the time to talk through some of
my questions with me. And then maybe here you ask
(09:17):
something else that you're wondering about, like what kind of
start date they're looking for, any other questions that you have,
and then say, and you don't need to if you
have a list of like eight questions, you don't need
to run through them all before salary, but I might
do one or two and then say do you have
any flexibility on the salary? And then you go from
there with the negotiation advice from the episode that you referenced,
(09:38):
and for people who are looking for that episode, if
you want to listen to it, it's the show from
April and it's called what should Salary Negotiations sound Like?
We'll go to a quick break here and then come
back with a question about what to do when your
boss asks you if you have a problem with him, Hi,
(10:05):
I have a question about when your boss in a
performance review suddenly asks you what you have a problem
with him? And this just happened to me recently, and
I was floored. I didn't know what to say because
there are things that I don't particular care of that
(10:26):
he does. But I felt like it was a trap
and that he would just get defensive and angry. So
I just tried to deflect any answer. But how do
you handle something like that? And when you're asked that
point blank and you do have things that you don't
(10:49):
like about your boss, but you can't just say I
don't like that you do this because they're your boss.
I would like to go back and kind of answer
the question, but I don't know how to do that.
You know, I don't want to generate defensiveness on his part,
So if you could give some advice on on that
(11:10):
type of question, it would be great, Thank you very much.
So my first question is are you assuming that he
will get defensive and angry, because he has a track
record of getting defensive and angry. If he does, this
is someone who has forfeited any right to expect honest
feedback from you. I mean, if managers want honest feedback,
(11:32):
they need to create an environment where it's clear that
is safe for people to give it. That's the price
of having power. And really, even when a good manager
does do the work to create the kind of environment
where it's clear that it's safe to give feedback, where
it's clear that you won't be penalized or responded to
with anger or defensiveness, some people still won't give their
managers feedback. That's just how it goes, and a reasonable
(11:55):
manager should know that. Anyway, back to your boss, if
he has given you reason to believe that he will
react badly to candid feedback, I would go with a
very bland answer like, oh, things are fine. You know,
there's nothing in particular that comes to mind. You might
feel weird saying that it's hard to stomach saying that
things are fine when they aren't. But if you have
(12:15):
reason to believe that being honest will make life harder
for you, well, I mean, that's still a choice that
you might decide to make at some point, but it
should be after a lot of thought, not on the
spur of the moment because he happens to ask you
and put you on the spot. On the other hand,
if your boss has a pretty good track record of
being open to feedback and taking descent, well, then it's
(12:36):
an opportunity potentially to improve your working relationship and maybe
benefit both of you. You still don't need to answer
on the spot, though. When he was doing your performance review,
he had had time to prepare and think about what
he wanted to say and how he wanted to frame it.
And there's no reason that you can't have that same
kind of time to reflect to and make sure that
(12:57):
you're framing things the way you want to you because
so often with high sensitivity topics, if we just wing
it without really preparing or reflecting beforehand, it often comes
out in a much less productive way then if you
do have time to prepare beforehand, which is why good
managers don't do performance evaluations on the fly, and you
(13:18):
shouldn't have to do the equivalent of a boss evaluation
on the fly either. It's fine to say, can I
give that some thought and come back to you in
the next few days or talk about it at our
next meeting. Now, in this case, your boss wasn't just
asking for feedback. He asked if you had a problem
with him. That's a more specific thing, and it sounds
(13:38):
like he's gotten the impression that maybe you do have
a problem with him. So the first thing that I
would want to understand in your shoes is why he
thinks that. So I would use a tone that expresses
a little concern about him having that impression, and see
what else you can find out. So this is what
you would have done in the moment. If we could
go back in time, which unfortunately we can. Ideally you
(14:01):
would have said something on the spot like, oh my goodness,
have I given you that impression? I definitely wouldn't want
you to think that. Or you could say, you know,
I do have some things that worry me, but I'm
concerned that I've given you the impression that I have
a problem with you. Can you tell me more about
what's concerning you? Anyway, it sounds like in the moment
you deflected, but which is fine. We do that. That's
(14:23):
more human. But now you want to go back and answer.
So if you know him to be someone who will
handle that kind of conversation, well you could go back
and say, you know, I've been thinking about your question
the other day about whether I have concerns about our
work relationship. And let's use some examples here, Let's say
let me think of an example. Let's say that you
feel like he changes his mind a lot after your
(14:45):
work is already under way, and it's frustrating and causes
you to waste time because you're having to go back
and change your work a lot. So you could say,
you know, I've been thinking about your question the other
day about whether I have concerns about our work relationship.
I do think that we could benefit from a better
way of figuring out parameters of projects before I'm too
far into them, Like with the X project, I had
(15:08):
put in a fair amount of work before hearing that
you actually wanted me to do why instead? And I
wonder if there is a better way for us to
draw those kind of details out before I've put in
a lot of time. It would probably be less frustrating
for each of us and save both of us time. Now,
the tone there is collaborative. It's not venting. It's not
(15:31):
I'm so relieved to finally have an outlet to express
my frustration with you. It's constructive. It's collaborative. It's curious,
you know, is there a better way? Can we mull
this over? And note that in the language there You're
not just saying I don't like that you two X.
You're saying I wonder if there's a better way for
us to handle X. So it's not just a complaint,
(15:54):
it's more forward looking, like can we figure out a
better way to approach this? And that framing can sometimes
help if you're worried about someone feeling defensive. But again,
if it's someone who gets defensive and angry, all that's
are off and I would proceed with extreme caution. Okay,
here is our next color. Hi Allison, I'm a recent
(16:18):
college graduate in my first real job post college. I
work for a fantastic company with a great culture, and
I was even paired with a mentor early on in
my work process, as some of us work remotely, so
I had additional point of contact in my company. I
have a team of six people, myself and three other
project managers, one support member, and our director. My project
(16:41):
happens to be the smallest on the team. My boss,
who is really great, has given me a lot of
autonomy in my work, but has recently started canceling or
rescheduling our weekly one on one. I get feedback that
I'm doing a good job keeping myself organized and on
the right track. How her, Recently, my clients have been
(17:02):
pushing back against my work and making suggestions which make
it difficult for me to maximize my KPI s. How
do I tell my boss I'm frustrated with my clients,
and how do I tell her without sounding like I
can't man my own ship? Thanks? Okay, First of all,
for people who are like, what is a KPI, it
stands for key performance indicator, and it's a metric of
(17:24):
how well you're achieving your the goals for your job. So, okay,
you are not going to sound like you can't man
your own ship just because you want some contact with
your boss. And that is especially true because you're right
out of college and your first professional job. No one
is going to find it weird that you want some
contact with your boss and some guidance from your boss.
(17:44):
That's totally normal. In fact, what is a problem is
when someone early in their career doesn't want that or
doesn't think they need it. That causes problems. This is
just you being conscientious. So I would say this to
your boss. Could we try to get it back to
meeting regularly. I have found that it's really helpful when
we do, and now that we're not meeting so often,
(18:06):
I'm finding that I have questions and things that I
need guidance on. That's it. That's a perfectly reasonable request,
and it's completely okay to ask. And then in those
meetings let her know what's happening with your client and
ask for her advice and how to navigate it. That
is exactly the sort of thing that one on ones
are four, and you should use her as a resource
(18:27):
when you're running into any weirdness or frustrations with clients.
It is true that there is a point in your
career where you will be expected to do more of
that problem solving on your own, but that point is many,
many years away. I mean, you're a new grad. It
makes sense that you want and need help with this stuff,
So just be explicit with your boss that you want it.
(18:50):
We'll do a final break here and then come back
with a question about what to do when your boss
freaks out when you're just a few minutes late to work. Hi, Alison,
thank you so much for taking the time to answer
my question. Um. I'm calling about the issue of tardiness
(19:14):
and offices, especially in New York City. I've heard mixed
things from from different friends, and I've had various experiences
with sort of what's expected and what's you know, acceptable
in terms of the trains being late or you know,
something unexpected happening during your commute. The place where I work, UM,
(19:36):
my commute is about forty minutes, and I always give
myself a cushion of about twenty minutes UM, and that
usually works out pretty well. Sometimes I get there and forty.
Sometimes it takes closer to an hour, depending on it
there's a delay or a sick passenger, etcetera. So I
(19:57):
always do the best that I can to let my
boss know that I am going to be late. As
soon as I know, I send him a text, and
it's never more than ten minutes. However, if I'm even
two minutes late, he often sends me like why I
perceived to be a passive aggressive text message. Um, this
morning he sent me one. You know, I was five
(20:18):
minutes late this morning. I let him know thirty minutes before.
He sent me a text that said, UM, you really
need to plan ahead for this exclamation point and kind
of like kind of like went on a little mini
text rants about it, and this he kind of does
the exact same thing every time this happens, and it
doesn't happen very often with me, and I consider myself
a very good employee. I've always meet my deadlines, I'm
(20:41):
rarely rarely late, and when I am it, you know,
it makes me mad. And so it's like it's even
worse to get to work and then have my boss
be passive aggressive with me about it, because it kind
of seems like, aren't we adults and can't we just
have an understanding that, um, you know that sometimes things happen,
and if you're five minutes late, and when you're not
late for a meeting or something, I don't I don't know.
(21:03):
I'm not trying to question the rules. I'm just asking.
I'm wondering how I can move forward at this job
where I feel shamed for being five minutes late when
I felt that I've done everything I can do and
I'm getting all my work done and I'm getting accolades
from my work and keep I'm generally well aliked at work.
This is really the only issue. My boss is often
just like moody about certain topics, and I never really
(21:26):
know when he will be moody. Um, So anyway, I
do try to handle this with professionalism and just you know, respond,
But it's like, is it rude of me too? When
he says you really need to plan ahead for this,
is it rude of me? Does then respond and say, oh,
I know I did plan ahead. I um, today it
was just a particularly rough day. Sorry about that. I mean,
(21:49):
I don't know. I feel like, you know, the more
it happens, the more it gets under his skin, and
but I feel a bit often, but you know, things
are going to happen, and it might happen once every
couple of months. Okay, I don't like the answer that
I'm going to give here. You're not gonna like it either.
I think maybe you need to leave ten minutes earlier.
And the reason I don't like this answer is I
(22:12):
agree with you that in most jobs, being five or
ten minutes late just should not be a big deal. Obviously,
there are jobs where it is a big deal, like
if you have to cover phones or work at the
front desk or other jobs where coverage is really important.
But for a ton of jobs, and I'm assuming this
is the case with yours, being five or ten minutes
late occasionally really should not matter. But there are bosses
(22:35):
who think that it does, and it sounds like you
have one of them. He is going to chastise you
for it every time it happens, and he's going to
send you I rate texts, and maybe he's going to
think you're less reliable because of it, which is incredibly
unfair and unwarranted. But it is the reality that you
have to work with. It's a stupid reality, but there
it is. Given that reality, I think the way to
(22:59):
solve the this probably to leave ten minutes earlier. That
will mean that on days when you don't need that buffer,
you will get there earlier than you need to. And
that is how it goes. And I get that it's annoying.
I would be annoyed. But when you're telling your boss,
you know, I did plan ahead, but the commune was
unexpectedly bad, he's skeptical because after it's happened a few times,
(23:21):
I'm very sure that what he's thinking is that planning
ahead would mean giving yourself a bigger buffer than you are,
and he is probably thinking that you should realize that.
And again, this is stupid if it doesn't happen much
and if it doesn't impact your job, but you have
a boss who thinks it's a big deal, So that
is what I would advise. Annoying as it is, I
(23:42):
will say that my advice would be different if we
weren't talking about ten minutes. If you're going to have
to leave like forty five minutes earlier than you are now,
or an hour earlier, just to keep this from happening
a couple of times a year, I would say that
was unreasonable enough that you shouldn't do it. But if
just minutes, we'll solve it. That's what I try. The
(24:03):
other option is to try to sit down and talk
to him about it. I'm kind of skeptical from the
way that you've described his responses previously. I'm skeptical that
this will work. But you could give it a shot.
You could sit down with him and you could say, hey,
you've made this really clear that you don't want this
to happen, but public transportation here can be really unreliable,
and I am leaving myself a substantial buffer, and it's
(24:26):
usually enough, but very occasionally it's not. I think I
do good work and I'm highly reliable, and so I'm
asking if there is a way for us to agree
that as long as it's not happening all the time.
It's part of the way that the trains work in
our city. He may say yes, he may say no,
but it could be worth having the conversation if you
(24:47):
feel like you have the capital to spare for it,
capital in this case meaning you're otherwise in good standing.
He likes your work, you haven't just asked for a
bunch of other exceptions to things and so forth. Okay,
we've that. Time for one more quick question. Hi Allison,
longtime listener and fan of Ask a Manager. Many years ago,
(25:08):
one of my first positions was that a small nonprofit
and the long story short, I looked it up and
the nonprofit has changed its name and it no longer
has this name title. Additionally, all of my former co
workers have since moved on. So what do I do
in terms of this spot on my resume? Do I
(25:30):
mentioned that it's updated? Do I take it off? I
was there for a year, so I don't want to
leave that off, and I can't even put anyone down
as a reference. No one is there anymore that I
used to know? What should I do for the spot
on my resume? Thanks? Okay, there is a very easy
solution here, So on your resume for the name of
(25:51):
this employer, put the name of the organization that it
had when you worked there, and then parentheses put the
new name. So like, if the organization used to be
called Tea Drinkers of America and now it's called T
for All. T for All is the organization I dream
of running one day, you would write Tea Drinkers of
America parentheses, now T for All. That's it. And the
(26:15):
question of references, um, just because your former co workers
aren't still there, that doesn't mean they can't still serve
as a reference. It's really normal for someone to be
a reference even after they've moved on to another job.
If the issue is that you can't track them down,
I would try linked in. But the other thing is
you said this was many years ago, so you probably
don't need references from a job that was many years
(26:37):
ago for only one year um. In fact, depending on
how long ago it was, you might not even need
it on your resume at all, as long as you
have like ten to fifteen years of your most recent experience.
If this was before that, you could leave it off
all together. Well, that is our show for today. If
you want to hear your question answered on a future episode,
you can record it on our show voicemail by calling
(26:58):
eight five five or two six work That is eight
five five four two six nine six seven five, or
you can email a sound file of your question to
podcast at Aska manager dot org. That's it for today
and I will be back next time with more questions.
H M h
My colleagues, We'll stop commenting on everything I get. My
assistant rolls eyes at people and meeting. Why does my
coworker keep taking credit for all my ideas? Have any
wisdom for me? Hi, I'm Alison Green. Welcome to the
Asking Manager podcast. Right answer questions from listeners about life
at work, everything from what to say if you're allergic
to your coworkers perfume to what to do if you
drink too much at the company party. Let's get started, Hi,
(00:28):
and welcome to the show. Today. I'm going to answer
a bunch of shorter questions from people, and the first
question we have is from someone who has a warm,
friendly relationship with her manager, but other people don't like it,
and she's not entirely sure about it herself. Hi, I
have a question. I work in an office. There are
(00:48):
about five other individuals in my division that report the
same manager. This manager is several years younger than me.
I'm in my mid thirties and he is about twenty
years younger than my colleague. My colleagues have and continue
to question his authority due to his age and relative
and experience in the industry. My manager and I get
(01:08):
along fairly well, and although we aren't friends, were friendly.
I assume that a lot of us have to do
with our age and that we're going through similar life experiences.
We're both newly married and have young children. I realized
that he's my manager and I keep him at a
friendly distance, but I fear that more and more frequently
he's coming to me as a friend chat almost on
(01:29):
a daily basis. So I have two questions. How do
I keep my relationship with my manager friendly but make
it clear that I don't want it to cross over
into legitimate friend territory. It's not my intention to be
its friends, but I feel like keeping an open, warm
relationship with my manager and colleagues is essential to my
happiness at work due to the collaborative nature of my job. Secondly,
(01:51):
how do I manage my relationship with my colleague? I
worry that if they see me and my manager being friendly,
because they will start talking about me behind my back.
Is well, what troubles me is that they've already started
teasing me that our manager is quote in love with
me simply because we are friendly ish and are of
opposite genders. I don't want that to get out of
(02:11):
hand or may get up the change to HR just
someone who doesn't see it as a joke. How do
I nip this on both fronts? Or should I just
continue to maintain my friendly distance as my manager and
ignore my colleagues comments. Thanks for any insight, I appreciate it.
There's a lot going on here, and your colleagues, who
I think, if I'm doing the math correctly, are in
(02:33):
their fifties, are being really childish. Okay, first, let's talk
about how to keep the relationship with your manager friendly
but not friends. And having an open, warm relationship with
your boss is a great thing, and you're also right
that at the same time, you need to be thoughtful
about making sure that it doesn't start feeling more like
actual friends, because I can cause all sorts of problems
(02:56):
like not getting objective feedback when you need to hear it,
or appearance of favoritism to others, and people questioning if
you're getting special treatment whether or not you really are,
and plus the power dynamics make it weird. Like with
a true friend, if you wanted to say no to
plans or talk to them about something that they did
that upset you, you could do that, But when it's
(03:17):
your manager. The power dynamics can really complicate those things. Anyway,
it sounds like you already know all of this and
you know that you don't want it to become a friendship.
But I'm listening that all out for people listening who
might be thinking, what's the big deal? Okay, so how
do you keep the boundary? I think it's fine to
talk about shared experiences like both having young children, but
(03:39):
you want to watch out for getting too personal. Like
it's fine to talk about how you're handling sleep training
or how weird those parent and child dance classes are,
but you probably want to stay away from more emotionally
intimate stuff like how having kids has affected your relationship
with your spouse, or the way that it's making you
read visit some hard stuff from your own childhood or
(04:02):
so forth. It's the emotionally intimate stuff that you want
to avoid, and I know in some ways that can suck,
because being vulnerable can be such a powerful way to connect,
But in this case, you're trying to avoid that specific
type of connection. The other thing I would look at
is how much the two of you are talking. If
you're routinely having our long conversations about non work stuff
(04:27):
that's too much. You absolutely can have real conversations about
life with your boss, but just put limits on it,
like ten or fifteen minutes here and there is completely fine,
But when it's frequently going longer than that, then you're
more in a problem zone. Now you mentioned that more
and more often he is coming to you to chat
as a friend almost daily, and this is tricky because
(04:49):
power dynamics can make it weird to push back on that,
and because he's your boss, you probably worry that seeming
chili or standoffish could affect your work relationship too, And
this is one of the reasons that being friends with
the boss is bad, by the way, because you shouldn't
have to worry that the way that you manage a
friendship will affect you professionally. Anyway, I think you can
(05:13):
take a light touch in setting boundaries, but still set
them so like when he comes into chat, it's okay
to be on a deadline or about to need to
make a phone call. You can say, hey, can I
catch you later, I'm about to jump on a call,
or after talking for a little bit, you know, well
I better get back to this. I've got to finish
it up. Before I leave today or so forth. As
(05:36):
long as your tone is warm and friendly during the
conversation part, you should be able to do the I've
got to get back to this part without seeming chilly. Now,
let's talk about the other part of your question, managing
your relationship with your coworkers. They've started teasing you that
your boss is in love with you, which is so
(05:58):
incredibly inappropriate. This is a workplace, it's not grade school,
and they're playing with people's professional reputations here. It's really
not cool. I'm also not loving how they're questioning his
authority because of his age and his relative inexperience in
your field. You said you're in your mid thirties and
he's a few years younger, so he's like, what thirty ish.
(06:19):
It's not like your company hired someone twenty two and
straight out of college with no work experience to manage
your team. So your co workers are they sound like
they're being kind of awful. Now, if he really doesn't
have the expertise to manage the team, that is a
legitimate issue, but you didn't mention that that's what's going on.
So I have the impression that your co workers are
(06:42):
maybe not the greatest anyway. I do think you have
to put a stop to the comments about him being
in love with you, because, in addition to being bizarrely
juvenile and just inappropriate for work, that really does have
the potential to affect his reputation and potentially even cause
hr problem for him. So the next time that you
(07:03):
hear something like that, shut it down and do it
in a pretty stern tone so that it's clear that
you're not joking, because I'm worried that otherwise that will
become part of the banter that they think they have
going on, is they say it and you protest. So
make it clear from your tone that you're serious. Say
something like that's really not funny and that could cause
(07:23):
a lot of problems if someone here's that and didn't
know that you were joking. Don't say that again. And
if you get pushback on that, say I'm serious. You're
being really reckless with people's professional reputations. Stop so stern serious,
not joking around, and your colleagues are acting like children. Okay,
(07:45):
I hope that helps. Here is our next collar. Hi
Allison and loving the podcast. I'm actually a new listener
and side I'm listening to the back catalog and I
just listened to the episode on salary negotiation, which I
sounds super helpful. My question is most job offers I've
had in the last five years or so have come
to me via email, um, in an attachment, something like that,
(08:08):
and I'm wondering how to broach the conversation when you're
not already talking to the manager if that makes sense.
You know, in the examples that you gave on the podcast,
you talked about when they make the offer, counter immediately
with the are you flexible with the salary, etcetera. But
when you're receiving this in an email and you're trying
to get back to them, how do you start that conversation,
(08:33):
especially if you don't you're not sitting at the desk
or on the phone with them in that moment. I
really appreciate your insight, Thank you so much, But ah,
you want to get on the phone for this if
at all possible. So if the job offer comes in
an email, you reply to the email and you say,
I'm really excited to get this offer. Could we set
(08:54):
up a time to talk by phone in the next
day or two. I have a few questions that I
wanted to talk through. That's it. And then when you
get on the phone with them, you start by reiterating
that you're really excited for the offer. You see something
like I was really glad to get the offer. I'm
excited about this role and the work that you do.
Thanks for making the time to talk through some of
my questions with me. And then maybe here you ask
(09:17):
something else that you're wondering about, like what kind of
start date they're looking for, any other questions that you have,
and then say, and you don't need to if you
have a list of like eight questions, you don't need
to run through them all before salary, but I might
do one or two and then say do you have
any flexibility on the salary? And then you go from
there with the negotiation advice from the episode that you referenced,
(09:38):
and for people who are looking for that episode, if
you want to listen to it, it's the show from
April and it's called what should Salary Negotiations sound Like?
We'll go to a quick break here and then come
back with a question about what to do when your
boss asks you if you have a problem with him, Hi,
(10:05):
I have a question about when your boss in a
performance review suddenly asks you what you have a problem
with him? And this just happened to me recently, and
I was floored. I didn't know what to say because
there are things that I don't particular care of that
(10:26):
he does. But I felt like it was a trap
and that he would just get defensive and angry. So
I just tried to deflect any answer. But how do
you handle something like that? And when you're asked that
point blank and you do have things that you don't
(10:49):
like about your boss, but you can't just say I
don't like that you do this because they're your boss.
I would like to go back and kind of answer
the question, but I don't know how to do that.
You know, I don't want to generate defensiveness on his part,
So if you could give some advice on on that
(11:10):
type of question, it would be great, Thank you very much.
So my first question is are you assuming that he
will get defensive and angry, because he has a track
record of getting defensive and angry. If he does, this
is someone who has forfeited any right to expect honest
feedback from you. I mean, if managers want honest feedback,
(11:32):
they need to create an environment where it's clear that
is safe for people to give it. That's the price
of having power. And really, even when a good manager
does do the work to create the kind of environment
where it's clear that it's safe to give feedback, where
it's clear that you won't be penalized or responded to
with anger or defensiveness, some people still won't give their
managers feedback. That's just how it goes, and a reasonable
(11:55):
manager should know that. Anyway, back to your boss, if
he has given you reason to believe that he will
react badly to candid feedback, I would go with a
very bland answer like, oh, things are fine. You know,
there's nothing in particular that comes to mind. You might
feel weird saying that it's hard to stomach saying that
things are fine when they aren't. But if you have
(12:15):
reason to believe that being honest will make life harder
for you, well, I mean, that's still a choice that
you might decide to make at some point, but it
should be after a lot of thought, not on the
spur of the moment because he happens to ask you
and put you on the spot. On the other hand,
if your boss has a pretty good track record of
being open to feedback and taking descent, well, then it's
(12:36):
an opportunity potentially to improve your working relationship and maybe
benefit both of you. You still don't need to answer
on the spot, though. When he was doing your performance review,
he had had time to prepare and think about what
he wanted to say and how he wanted to frame it.
And there's no reason that you can't have that same
kind of time to reflect to and make sure that
(12:57):
you're framing things the way you want to you because
so often with high sensitivity topics, if we just wing
it without really preparing or reflecting beforehand, it often comes
out in a much less productive way then if you
do have time to prepare beforehand, which is why good
managers don't do performance evaluations on the fly, and you
(13:18):
shouldn't have to do the equivalent of a boss evaluation
on the fly either. It's fine to say, can I
give that some thought and come back to you in
the next few days or talk about it at our
next meeting. Now, in this case, your boss wasn't just
asking for feedback. He asked if you had a problem
with him. That's a more specific thing, and it sounds
(13:38):
like he's gotten the impression that maybe you do have
a problem with him. So the first thing that I
would want to understand in your shoes is why he
thinks that. So I would use a tone that expresses
a little concern about him having that impression, and see
what else you can find out. So this is what
you would have done in the moment. If we could
go back in time, which unfortunately we can. Ideally you
(14:01):
would have said something on the spot like, oh my goodness,
have I given you that impression? I definitely wouldn't want
you to think that. Or you could say, you know,
I do have some things that worry me, but I'm
concerned that I've given you the impression that I have
a problem with you. Can you tell me more about
what's concerning you? Anyway, it sounds like in the moment
you deflected, but which is fine. We do that. That's
(14:23):
more human. But now you want to go back and answer.
So if you know him to be someone who will
handle that kind of conversation, well you could go back
and say, you know, I've been thinking about your question
the other day about whether I have concerns about our
work relationship. And let's use some examples here, Let's say
let me think of an example. Let's say that you
feel like he changes his mind a lot after your
(14:45):
work is already under way, and it's frustrating and causes
you to waste time because you're having to go back
and change your work a lot. So you could say,
you know, I've been thinking about your question the other
day about whether I have concerns about our work relationship.
I do think that we could benefit from a better
way of figuring out parameters of projects before I'm too
far into them, Like with the X project, I had
(15:08):
put in a fair amount of work before hearing that
you actually wanted me to do why instead? And I
wonder if there is a better way for us to
draw those kind of details out before I've put in
a lot of time. It would probably be less frustrating
for each of us and save both of us time. Now,
the tone there is collaborative. It's not venting. It's not
(15:31):
I'm so relieved to finally have an outlet to express
my frustration with you. It's constructive. It's collaborative. It's curious,
you know, is there a better way? Can we mull
this over? And note that in the language there You're
not just saying I don't like that you two X.
You're saying I wonder if there's a better way for
us to handle X. So it's not just a complaint,
(15:54):
it's more forward looking, like can we figure out a
better way to approach this? And that framing can sometimes
help if you're worried about someone feeling defensive. But again,
if it's someone who gets defensive and angry, all that's
are off and I would proceed with extreme caution. Okay,
here is our next color. Hi Allison, I'm a recent
(16:18):
college graduate in my first real job post college. I
work for a fantastic company with a great culture, and
I was even paired with a mentor early on in
my work process, as some of us work remotely, so
I had additional point of contact in my company. I
have a team of six people, myself and three other
project managers, one support member, and our director. My project
(16:41):
happens to be the smallest on the team. My boss,
who is really great, has given me a lot of
autonomy in my work, but has recently started canceling or
rescheduling our weekly one on one. I get feedback that
I'm doing a good job keeping myself organized and on
the right track. How her, Recently, my clients have been
(17:02):
pushing back against my work and making suggestions which make
it difficult for me to maximize my KPI s. How
do I tell my boss I'm frustrated with my clients,
and how do I tell her without sounding like I
can't man my own ship? Thanks? Okay, First of all,
for people who are like, what is a KPI, it
stands for key performance indicator, and it's a metric of
(17:24):
how well you're achieving your the goals for your job. So, okay,
you are not going to sound like you can't man
your own ship just because you want some contact with
your boss. And that is especially true because you're right
out of college and your first professional job. No one
is going to find it weird that you want some
contact with your boss and some guidance from your boss.
(17:44):
That's totally normal. In fact, what is a problem is
when someone early in their career doesn't want that or
doesn't think they need it. That causes problems. This is
just you being conscientious. So I would say this to
your boss. Could we try to get it back to
meeting regularly. I have found that it's really helpful when
we do, and now that we're not meeting so often,
(18:06):
I'm finding that I have questions and things that I
need guidance on. That's it. That's a perfectly reasonable request,
and it's completely okay to ask. And then in those
meetings let her know what's happening with your client and
ask for her advice and how to navigate it. That
is exactly the sort of thing that one on ones
are four, and you should use her as a resource
(18:27):
when you're running into any weirdness or frustrations with clients.
It is true that there is a point in your
career where you will be expected to do more of
that problem solving on your own, but that point is many,
many years away. I mean, you're a new grad. It
makes sense that you want and need help with this stuff,
So just be explicit with your boss that you want it.
(18:50):
We'll do a final break here and then come back
with a question about what to do when your boss
freaks out when you're just a few minutes late to work. Hi, Alison,
thank you so much for taking the time to answer
my question. Um. I'm calling about the issue of tardiness
(19:14):
and offices, especially in New York City. I've heard mixed
things from from different friends, and I've had various experiences
with sort of what's expected and what's you know, acceptable
in terms of the trains being late or you know,
something unexpected happening during your commute. The place where I work, UM,
(19:36):
my commute is about forty minutes, and I always give
myself a cushion of about twenty minutes UM, and that
usually works out pretty well. Sometimes I get there and forty.
Sometimes it takes closer to an hour, depending on it
there's a delay or a sick passenger, etcetera. So I
(19:57):
always do the best that I can to let my
boss know that I am going to be late. As
soon as I know, I send him a text, and
it's never more than ten minutes. However, if I'm even
two minutes late, he often sends me like why I
perceived to be a passive aggressive text message. Um, this
morning he sent me one. You know, I was five
(20:18):
minutes late this morning. I let him know thirty minutes before.
He sent me a text that said, UM, you really
need to plan ahead for this exclamation point and kind
of like kind of like went on a little mini
text rants about it, and this he kind of does
the exact same thing every time this happens, and it
doesn't happen very often with me, and I consider myself
a very good employee. I've always meet my deadlines, I'm
(20:41):
rarely rarely late, and when I am it, you know,
it makes me mad. And so it's like it's even
worse to get to work and then have my boss
be passive aggressive with me about it, because it kind
of seems like, aren't we adults and can't we just
have an understanding that, um, you know that sometimes things happen,
and if you're five minutes late, and when you're not
late for a meeting or something, I don't I don't know.
(21:03):
I'm not trying to question the rules. I'm just asking.
I'm wondering how I can move forward at this job
where I feel shamed for being five minutes late when
I felt that I've done everything I can do and
I'm getting all my work done and I'm getting accolades
from my work and keep I'm generally well aliked at work.
This is really the only issue. My boss is often
just like moody about certain topics, and I never really
(21:26):
know when he will be moody. Um, So anyway, I
do try to handle this with professionalism and just you know, respond,
But it's like, is it rude of me too? When
he says you really need to plan ahead for this,
is it rude of me? Does then respond and say, oh,
I know I did plan ahead. I um, today it
was just a particularly rough day. Sorry about that. I mean,
(21:49):
I don't know. I feel like, you know, the more
it happens, the more it gets under his skin, and
but I feel a bit often, but you know, things
are going to happen, and it might happen once every
couple of months. Okay, I don't like the answer that
I'm going to give here. You're not gonna like it either.
I think maybe you need to leave ten minutes earlier.
And the reason I don't like this answer is I
(22:12):
agree with you that in most jobs, being five or
ten minutes late just should not be a big deal. Obviously,
there are jobs where it is a big deal, like
if you have to cover phones or work at the
front desk or other jobs where coverage is really important.
But for a ton of jobs, and I'm assuming this
is the case with yours, being five or ten minutes
late occasionally really should not matter. But there are bosses
(22:35):
who think that it does, and it sounds like you
have one of them. He is going to chastise you
for it every time it happens, and he's going to
send you I rate texts, and maybe he's going to
think you're less reliable because of it, which is incredibly
unfair and unwarranted. But it is the reality that you
have to work with. It's a stupid reality, but there
it is. Given that reality, I think the way to
(22:59):
solve the this probably to leave ten minutes earlier. That
will mean that on days when you don't need that buffer,
you will get there earlier than you need to. And
that is how it goes. And I get that it's annoying.
I would be annoyed. But when you're telling your boss,
you know, I did plan ahead, but the commune was
unexpectedly bad, he's skeptical because after it's happened a few times,
(23:21):
I'm very sure that what he's thinking is that planning
ahead would mean giving yourself a bigger buffer than you are,
and he is probably thinking that you should realize that.
And again, this is stupid if it doesn't happen much
and if it doesn't impact your job, but you have
a boss who thinks it's a big deal, So that
is what I would advise. Annoying as it is, I
(23:42):
will say that my advice would be different if we
weren't talking about ten minutes. If you're going to have
to leave like forty five minutes earlier than you are now,
or an hour earlier, just to keep this from happening
a couple of times a year, I would say that
was unreasonable enough that you shouldn't do it. But if
just minutes, we'll solve it. That's what I try. The
(24:03):
other option is to try to sit down and talk
to him about it. I'm kind of skeptical from the
way that you've described his responses previously. I'm skeptical that
this will work. But you could give it a shot.
You could sit down with him and you could say, hey,
you've made this really clear that you don't want this
to happen, but public transportation here can be really unreliable,
and I am leaving myself a substantial buffer, and it's
(24:26):
usually enough, but very occasionally it's not. I think I
do good work and I'm highly reliable, and so I'm
asking if there is a way for us to agree
that as long as it's not happening all the time.
It's part of the way that the trains work in
our city. He may say yes, he may say no,
but it could be worth having the conversation if you
(24:47):
feel like you have the capital to spare for it,
capital in this case meaning you're otherwise in good standing.
He likes your work, you haven't just asked for a
bunch of other exceptions to things and so forth. Okay,
we've that. Time for one more quick question. Hi Allison,
longtime listener and fan of Ask a Manager. Many years ago,
(25:08):
one of my first positions was that a small nonprofit
and the long story short, I looked it up and
the nonprofit has changed its name and it no longer
has this name title. Additionally, all of my former co
workers have since moved on. So what do I do
in terms of this spot on my resume? Do I
(25:30):
mentioned that it's updated? Do I take it off? I
was there for a year, so I don't want to
leave that off, and I can't even put anyone down
as a reference. No one is there anymore that I
used to know? What should I do for the spot
on my resume? Thanks? Okay, there is a very easy
solution here, So on your resume for the name of
(25:51):
this employer, put the name of the organization that it
had when you worked there, and then parentheses put the
new name. So like, if the organization used to be
called Tea Drinkers of America and now it's called T
for All. T for All is the organization I dream
of running one day, you would write Tea Drinkers of
America parentheses, now T for All. That's it. And the
(26:15):
question of references, um, just because your former co workers
aren't still there, that doesn't mean they can't still serve
as a reference. It's really normal for someone to be
a reference even after they've moved on to another job.
If the issue is that you can't track them down,
I would try linked in. But the other thing is
you said this was many years ago, so you probably
don't need references from a job that was many years
(26:37):
ago for only one year um. In fact, depending on
how long ago it was, you might not even need
it on your resume at all, as long as you
have like ten to fifteen years of your most recent experience.
If this was before that, you could leave it off
all together. Well, that is our show for today. If
you want to hear your question answered on a future episode,
you can record it on our show voicemail by calling
(26:58):
eight five five or two six work That is eight
five five four two six nine six seven five, or
you can email a sound file of your question to
podcast at Aska manager dot org. That's it for today
and I will be back next time with more questions.
H M h
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